Hardly. It's the entrance to a cemetery. But what a cemetery - the biggest you will ever see.
Mirogoj Cemetery requires about a 20-minute bus ride from downtown Zagreb to see, but it's quite interesting as these things go. The facilities has 60,000 graves and contains the remains of about 320,000 people. Once you get inside the walls, it extends as far as the eye can see and then some.
This facility has an interesting operating principle, at least from the American perspective. You don't buy a plot of land here; you rent it. Purchases can lease the space for up to 10 years in advance. But if nothing is done to renew the lease, the cemetery essentially forecloses after a small grace period. They figure that the person in question has died, and no one in the family is either around or cares enough to renew it. So the space is essentially torn up, and the bodies are moved elsewhere. The exceptions are some religious figures and other dignitaries.
There's even someone whose work you might know who was bury there, which leads us to a story. You've never heard of Ivo Robić, also known as Mr. Morgen, if you aren't Croatia. But you have heard one of his works. The story goes that he wrote a nice little tune that didn't go anywhere, so he sold the melody rights to Bert Kaempfert. That led to a connection to Avo Uvezian, an Armenian-American who wrote new lyrics. A fellow named Frank Sinatra thought the new version would work for him. The result? "Strangers in the Night." It may not be true, but it should be true.
Prices for graves vary on location. The big plots, especially ones that are close to the entrance, need big dollars to reserve a spot. More than one person can be laid to rest in a grave area; they often just did a little deeper. And the headstones are quite ornate. You probably could do a book of photos on that subject.
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